


Not Even a Day

by foreignobjecticus



Category: Morgan's Boy
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:33:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignobjecticus/pseuds/foreignobjecticus
Summary: Not even a day later, he was missed.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Not Even a Day

**Author's Note:**

> A response to the end of Morgan's Boy, written in under an hour to keep company the numbness in my heart.

Pugh wandered by Morgan’s new townhouse early the next morning, right about when the sun had risen – right about the time he used to be up at Morgan’s farm. It was too tempting not to come by the house again. Not working did that to a man; gave him too much time alone with nothing to do. And, truth be told, his heart hurt. The bottle of liquor sat heavy in his breast pocket, tucked away where it would stay until Morgan accepted it, until they could drink it together again.

Pugh knew it would take the old boy time. He’d done Morgan wrong, of that he wasn’t denying, but in the end it was all for the best. It had been for Pugh – losing the farm had hurt, truly, but it was still there – the fields and trees, the rough-hewn fences and walls of stone built by his family’s own hands. It wasn’t gone and neither was Blainau. It’d change, for sure, but the memories of what it was would live on.

Pugh walked up to Morgan’s door slowly, his footsteps light on the gravel footpath, and he listened out with muffled old ears for the signs of Morgan up and about; a boiling kettle, a scraping of a knife against dry toast, teaspoon clinking against the old wooden side table, saved from Lee’s room in the old farm and repurposed to the kitchen, the only one that would fit.

But there was no movement inside, no life. And so Pugh left. _He’s earned his lie in, poor lad_. He’d try again later.

*******

“I don’t understand!” Lee looked down crossly at the telephone and hammered the receiver, punching in the numbers again. At the end of the crackling line, he could hear the ringing going on and on, no reply. He slammed the handset down.

“He’s probably out down the pub, this time in the afternoon,” Val called out from the kitchen doorway, a tea towel wrapped around the old serving dish in her hands. The Spoils of Blainau, the things Morgan didn’t want to sell off, things he thought best Val take with her, a memory of the old times. _They’d be worth more to you than me, and I can’t bear the thought of selling them. Go on, take them, Val; please._ Treasures, bitter memories thrust into her unwilling hands. But they were here now; best make a place for them. For a while, at least.

“You don’t know Morgan – or the blokes down the pub. Right nasty bunch they are. No, he wouldn’t be there, trust me.” Lee frowned, dropped to the sofa beside the telephone, drummed his fingers a moment and then picked up the receiver again. “I’ll try one more time.”

*******

Harry Gregory pulled up into his driveway late that evening and switched off the motor. With the sound of the cylinders abolished, there was only the harsh rustle of the wind whistling in the hills, bringing with it storm clouds in the fading sunset. He shuffled into the house in a hurry.

“What took you?” Eileen padded up to her husband, a glass of half-finished whisky in hand and her cigarette perched between her wrinkled lips. Harry stamped his feet, pulling off his driving gloves clumsily.

“You wouldn’t think it were summer with weather like that. Storm’s coming, I expect; the temperature’s dropped by miles.”

“It’s _always_ cold here,” she sneered back and turned imperiously towards the drawing room. “Come have a drink, Harry, and explain yourself.”

“I stopped by Blainau, actually,” Harry confessed as he crossed to the drinks cart and dashed a finger of scotch into a tumbler. And then another for good measure. “Was hoping to catch Mr. Thomas, but I think he must have been out in the fields or something.”

“I thought you said he’d sold that junkyard?” Eileen floated into a seat and spread herself like her cheap rayon shawls. They’d been real silk once, she thought, unironically self-effacing; it was what had been _owed to her_ , lost. 

“Must have been clearing up the last of the lot, I expect. Had a bonfire going in the yard,” Harry explained with a curious quirk of his brow. “Funny sort of things to be burning, though…”

“He wasn’t burning the sheep, was he?” Eileen laughed at her own poor joke and sunk back into her drink as the last embers of her cigarette nearly dropped to her lap. She flicked the butt to an ashtray by her side with an irritated flourish.

“Lord no – _baby photos_ , I think.”

“His?”

“Well I don’t expect they’re anyone else’s… unless the old sport got up to a bit of _trouble_ _on the_ _side_!”

“Maybe that boy Lee was his after all!” Eileen cackled to her husband’s tune, their toothy smiles _vicious_. “You should have picked one up! Think of the delicious gossip we could have had! Or as close to gossip as we’ll get around these parts…”

And they drank and laughed, tittered gossip about a man they hardly knew; a brief amusement for the evening.

*******

Over cold, silent Blainau, the clouds rolled in and rain started. First, a gentle patter on the trampled dirt and battered roof of the Land Rover, and then a sudden roar as the heavens dumped down upon the land, the house, the drive, the farm.

The wind picked up, blasting, blowing the dead embers of the fire across the yard, battering against the old barn door until the corrugated iron bucked and heaved over the stone holding it at bay. The sheet twisted, turned, warped against the old, rusted hinge. With no hand to hold it steady, it tore free and blew into the distance, a rumble like the coming thunder as it parted.

Inside the side house, through the gaps below the wooden door, the first flashes of summer lightning lit the empty room. For the briefest of moments, it was like day, and the white light glinted against shining eyes before it disappeared, cast back to shadows on the floor.


End file.
